


Growing Roots

by roguefaerie (samidha)



Category: I Will Never Die - Delta Rae (Song), Original Work
Genre: Cooking, F/F, Food, Happy, Happy Ending, Healthy Relationships, Restaurants, Small Towns, Trees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 09:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18989692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/roguefaerie
Summary: Rae and Sally Ann put down roots and blossom.





	Growing Roots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kiraly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiraly/gifts).



_One_

When it all began, it was the trees out behind the town that provided Rae and Sally Ann the most quiet solitude. They were two girls, running through their own forest, thick enough to get lost in and have their privacy, but somewhere that they could never really get lost. They always made it home in time when their Mamas called for them from their back doors. They were girls, wiry from climbing trees and sure of themselves. The trees were the shelter for budding feelings, and hidden secrets. 

_Two_

They had picnics as far out into the trees as they dared to go, by the creek. Out there, with the water, they kissed pebbles and sent their hearts skipping out across the water.

“That’ll be us someday,” they said to each other by turns, “Out there, where we want to be.”

“Or right here. Make a life for ourselves in town.”

“Really?”

But they had to admit that it was true--their hearts were as much a part of the land as they belonged to each other. 

“You could bury me right here,” Sally Ann said, “You know, under the biggest tree you could find. We’ll be two old women together and that’s where I’d want to be.”

“I’d want to be right next to you.”

They had loved this land too long for it to be any other way.

_Three_

It was Rae who kept her wiry figure. If the two of them were walking together in town and anything happened with a boy Sally Ann didn’t want attention from, it was well known that Rae could break each of his fingers that he laid on Sally Ann. They were inseparable, and no one tried to get between them.

It happened often enough at first that it only strengthened how close they were and how much they knew that their relationship was good and true, how it let both of them shine out and show the world who they were, together and apart.

_Four_

They had a dream of working together and building a life that way, feeding the town food they craved so that everyone went home with full bellies and not a single complaint about Rae or Sally Ann. They knew there were women in the past that their own lives would take after. They knew the shape of things. They knew, too, maybe they’d inspire the kids that came after them, kids who loved the quiet comfort of the trees and what they held close. 

There were whispers among the kids, and if anyone was seen around town with holes in their shoes they knew they could go to Sally Ann and she’d have an extra pair tucked in the back of the restaurant. If they were hungry, they’d go home with their bellies full of hush puppies. 

The kids knew that Rae and Sally Ann weren’t anything to fear, and though the parents might look at it all dubiously, they’d all remember the times the two of them helped their kids, or even Bobbi’s down the street when the roof started to leak at their place.

The restaurant became the central point in the town, and in the end no one was going to turn away the food made there, even when they themselves couldn’t pay and Rae snuck away silently without ever remembering to give them their check in the first place.

_Five_

After a long day in the kitchens, they slipped home together and got comfortable, enjoying the feel of soft pajamas on sore and tired bodies and curling up together in the ways they had always fit close. 

The home they made together was modest and comfortable, worn in in all the right ways--like when you can tell someone really lived there.

But the place that they still let their hair down after all these years was out in the woods, by the water, listening to it bubble by as they ate a picnic under the canopy of the trees on a rare day off.

It might have been grim for some people to eat there, where they had decided they’d still be able to be buried, under the wind. But for Rae and Sally Ann, this would always be a piece of home, something tethering them to the land in a way they didn’t mind at all.

_Six_

The town loved them, and they were as much an integral part of helping things run smoothly and keeping things peaceful and happy as anyone else making sure things got done in their neck of the woods. Life wasn’t easy, and it had never been simple, but there was a collective effort to keep it all together.

They had played their cards right, in the end, by offering what they could of their skills to the townsfolk they knew, and with that they had built a life. It was quiet and peaceful because they had made it that way. 

They walked beside the little stream within the treetops and thought of how big it had seemed when they were small, and how they had built an entire life around their love of this very place. These days they could hold hands out in the open, but they still enjoyed their private moments out behind the town itself. And they knew when the time might come that they’d built in such a way that their wishes would be honored.

They had left their mark in the earth here long, long ago, and brought their love to life here in the southern air. Everything from the trees by the water and the birds in the air knew of the strength of their love, the heat of their kisses, and their love for this very land.

 

They had found a place to live, be at peace, and be together in the end. And the story of the two of them would never be far from the hearts of the locals, the families who would always remember. They had left too much of their story among the people, the flora, the fauna of this land.


End file.
